Sound design for a short - advise from experience

[Andre Andreev]

Hello, dvinfo community Genius!
I am here today to ask a question of those of you who have experience in the matter (vs read/heard/thought about it like i have).

I just finished cutting an 8-minute short film and need to move to the next stage - sound design and scoring. The short is about a man who starts hearing the soundtrack of his life. Needless to say sound design and scoring are of extreme importance as the score itself becomes a character in the story.


What is the general workflow in this process? What I am planning to do is:
a. Adjust/move the original dialogue so that it becomes cohesive with what's on screen and the storyline ("move" some audioclips as I am using a different take where the sound is not available, or I am using a take where the timing is different and the words come from someone off screen)
b. Define (use markers to indicate on the timeline) the start/end points of the score and its "behavior"
c. Define the ambience tracks and their contents (street, street+car passing, street + steps, street+wind etc.)
d. Clean up or re-record the dialogue (Why, why didn't I rent the BIG wind protector?!) - what would be the easiest least painful way to do this "at home"?
f. Re-record the street ambience sans the wind
g. Record foley (steps, a body hitting a chainlink fence, face slap, grabbing a wallet from somebody's hand,taking a watch off someone's hand)
h. Mix dialogue, try to make it look/sound authentic (Tips?)
i. Mix ambience (Tips?)
j. Find a musician willing to work for credit and have him write the score parts within the specified parameters (I presume key here would be constant interaction with the musician vs waiting for a polished version which may or may not work)
k. Mix the score in (Tips?)

I have not done any of the above and would like to hear how YOU would do it/have done it successfully - feel free to discuss the individual items as well as the workflow as a whole.

My equipment:
- Microphones: Me67, AT897
- Camera: DVX100A
- Software: VegasVideo 6

For re-recording of the sound and the street ambience I intend to use the camera as a recording device and then transfer the sound from tape to PC using Firewire.

Looking at this list I feel a little overwhelmed and I am looking for your advise on how to make things simpler, more effective and most importantly - achieve usable results the first time!

I understand that solving all of the above in a single reply is impossible and that solutions/tutorials may already exist. Feel free to refer to links instead of writing everything from scratch.

Thank you in advance
-- Andre